Anaïs Marin To Tell UN About Human Rights Situation In Belarus

There has been no improvement in the authorities' attitude towards fundamental freedoms and rights.

The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold its forty-first regular session in Geneva from June 24 to July 12, 2019.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, will open the session at 9 a.m. on Monday, June 24, and will inform the Council about the human rights situation around the world. During the three-week session, the Council will consider more than 100 reports on a wide range of issues submitted by 24 experts, groups and mechanisms on human rights, Viasna informs.

Anaïs Marin, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, will inform the Council among others.

"Over the past year, there has been no significant improvement in the human rights situation in Belarus, but there have been some positive developments," - the Special Rapporteur noted in her first report, prepared for the summer session of the Council.

Anaïs Marin describes systemic and systematic human rights violations in law and in practice, and her findings suggest that there has been no significant improvement and that the Government of Belarus must clearly demonstrate its willingness to respond to long-standing criticism by implementing concrete, long-term changes.

We remind you that Anaïs Marin, a Frenchwoman, was appointed to replace Miklos Haraszti, who was the UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus from 2012 to 2018. She is a political scientist specializing in international relations and is interested in post-communist reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. She is fluent in French, English and Russian, understands the Belarusian language and can read in Belarusian.

The Belarusian authorities still do not recognize the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Belarus.